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Super Micro employees charged with smuggling Nvidia chips to China

admin — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 20:08:06 +0000

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York has charged associates of an unidentified U.S. server maker with illegally diverting billions of dollars in Nvidia-powered servers to China.

The U.S. government has been trying to figure out how high-powered chips have reached China without authorization, as American artificial intelligence companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI face challenges from DeepSeek and other Chinese rivals.

In an indictment unsealed Thursday, the U.S. government alleged that Yih-Shyan “Wally” Liaw, Ruei-Tsan “Steven” Chang and Ting-Wei “Willy” Sun worked together to violate the Export Control Reform Act.

The server company’s products containing Nvidia chips “are subject to strict U.S. export controls barring their sale to China without a license,” the plaintiff said in the indictment. “Those controls are in place to protect U.S. national security and foreign policy interests, among other things.”

Liaw is a co-founder of server maker Super Micro Computer and a member of its board of directors. He controls $464 million worth of Super Micro shares, according to FactSet. He did not respond to a request for comment.

Shares of Super Micro fell 30% on Friday after a federal court released the indictment.

Super Micro said that while the company isn’t named as a defendant, Liaw works as senior vice president of business development, Chang is a sales manager in Taiwan, and Sun is a contractor. The company has placed the employees on leave and ended its relationship with the contractor.

Liaw and Sun were both arrested Thursday, while Chang is a fugitive, the attorney’s office said.

“The conduct by these individuals alleged in the indictment is a contravention of the Company’s policies and compliance controls, including efforts to circumvent applicable export control laws and regulations,” according to a statement. “Supermicro maintains a robust compliance program and is committed to full adherence to all applicable U.S. export and re-export control laws and regulations.”

A Southeast Asian company, acting as a middleman, compiled fake paperwork to appear as if it would be using the servers and had a separate logistics firm repackage the servers to conceal them before going to China, according to the indictment.

The defendants tried to fool the server maker’s compliance team with “dummy” servers at the Southeast Asian company’s storage facilities, while the real servers had already been forwarded to China, and pressured the compliance team into approving shipments, according to the indictment. The defendants allegedly also employed “dummy” servers during a visit from a U.S. export control officer.

The efforts have yielded around $2.5 billion in sales for the server maker since 2024, with servers sold for $510 million between late April 2025 and mid-May 2025 going to the Southeast Asian company and on to China, the indictment said. The plaintiff said the server maker had no U.S. Commerce Department license to export servers featuring Nvidia GPUs to China.

Chang worked on keeping auditors from inspecting parts of data centers where the Southeast Asian company was supposedly keeping the servers that had in fact gone to China, and he arranged for an auditor he called “friendly” to do the review, the indictment said. In 2024 Super Micro said its auditor, Ernst & Young, had resigned, and later it brought in BDO as a replacement.

Nvidia’s graphics processing units have been in demand across the world for training generative AI models.

President Donald Trump initially sought to prevent China from obtaining the processors. But in December he said he told China’s President Xi Jinping that the U.S. would permit Nvidia to ship H200 GPUs to China “under conditions that allow for continued strong National Security.”

Earlier this week Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the chipmaker is restarting manufacturing to fulfill H200 purchase orders from China.

Last summer, Nvidia had received licenses to export the H20 chip to China, with Huang agreeing to provide the U.S. with 15% of its sales in China.

Prosecutors alleged Liaw pushed for the Southeast Asian company to adopt a more advanced chip, the B200, which employs Nvidia’s Blackwell architecture, in late 2024.

“Roughly how many you can take by January? Feb? March? April?” Liaw wrote in a text message to an executive at the Southeast Asian company. “Just roughly forecast will be fine … Then we can propose to [Nvidia] with the way they can accept … This is the only way to have [Nvidia] to promise the B200 allocation so far as I know.”

In 2025, Liaw sent the executive a link to a White House statement about an export rule for AI products that was set to be enacted later in the year, saying that the pace of shipments would need to increase before the effective date, according to the indictment.

When a broker who had bought Nvidia-powered servers from the Southeast Asian company sent Liaw a text message containing a link to an announcement about Chinese nationals being arrested for smuggling AI chips into China, Liaw allegedly responded with sobbing emojis.

“Crimes involving sensitive technology must be met with swift action,” Jay Clayton, the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, was quoted as saying in a statement. “Otherwise the law is meaningless.”

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Prediction markets head into basketball season after Super Bowl high

admin — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 18:00:36 +0000

A basketball finds nothing but net during practice before a 2024 NCAA Tournament game at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh.

Charles LeClaire | Reuters

Prediction markets saw strong results from the Super Bowl, but it was just an appetizer for a banquet of sporting events in 2026 that are expected to drive surging volumes in event contracts.

Kalshi saw record downloads during Super Bowl week, up 1,544% from the same time period last year, according to a report from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. Daily active users jumped more than 1,100% to nearly 2 million on the day of the big game, the firm said.

That was almost three times the daily active users on sportsbook BetMGM, co-owned by MGM and Entain, which had 81% growth to 680,000 daily active users. Polymarket reported 59,000 daily active users and 264% growth over the previous year.

More than $1 billion was traded on Kalshi for the Super Bowl, up 2,700% according to the company. Founder and CEO Tarek Mansour told CNBC Tuesday that consumers are drawn by having lots of trading options for the game in one place.

“Our culture markets were huge this weekend. You know, ‘What [Bad] Bunny was going to perform’ was over $100 million in trading,” he said.

Though prediction markets enable users to buy event contracts for a wide swath of financial, weather, pop culture and other events, sports have been driving the action and the profits.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev is pushing back against any investor concerns the Super Bowl was as good as it gets for trading on sports prediction markets.

“What we’re actually seeing is surprising us,” Tenev said on his company’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Tuesday. “In January, for instance, NBA contracts surpassed NFL in trading activity on our platform.”

Major sports events keep rolling, with the Winter Olympics offering a variety of betting options through Feb. 22. This weekend, fans will also get an eyeful during the NBA All-Star Weekend.

March brings college basketball madness, with the NCAA Tournament taking off with Selection Sunday on March 15. The entire tournament typically brings in more gambling dollars than Super Bowl.

And then there’s the World Cup, kicking off 104 games in mid-June.

Kalshi has been aggressive in marketing, outspending Polymarket in the United States by about 19 times and outspending DraftKings by about 35%, according to Sensor Tower estimates.

Still, the American giants in sports betting remain dominant. DraftKings saw 5 million daily active users for the Super Bowl and FanDuel had 4.2 million, according to the Sensor Tower data.

The CEOs of sportsbook market leaders FanDuel and DraftKings both told CNBC just before the game that they don’t see any cannibalization of their traditional sports betting business. They instead see real opportunity with sports and event contracts in states that haven’t legalized sports wagering.

Tenev said events contracts are the “fastest growing business in the company’s history.” Robinhood reported a 300% rise in “other revenue,” which is largely comprised of event contracts.

And the growth is accelerating. Robinhood reported 12 billion event contracts in 2025, and it’s already seen 4 billion contracts so far in 2026.

Disclosure: CNBC and Kalshi have a commercial relationship that includes a minority investment.

joker123

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Automakers mainly skip 2026 Super Bowl advertising

admin — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 15:43:46 +0000

Volkswagen is one of three automakers expected to advertise during the Super Bowl in 2026.

Courtesy VW

DETROIT — Automakers are largely sitting on the advertising sidelines during this year’s Super Bowl amid uncertainty in the U.S. automotive industry involving sales, tariffs and regulations.

Carmakers — historically major buyers of ads during the big game — have been inconsistent with advertising during the Super Bowl in recent years, with only a handful putting out spots each year.

“It’s definitely been on the decline,” said Sean Muller, CEO of ad data company iSpot. “Autos are tightening their belts, and they’re probably pulling back on their budgets, and certainly that’s reflected. I think the Super Bowl is a good barometer for all of this.”

Automakers accounted for 40% of Super Bowl ad minutes in 2012, but dropped all the way to 7% by 2025, according to iSpot. Only three automakers are expected to air ads, totaling roughly two minutes, during this year’s game.

Tim Mahoney, a longtime automotive marketing executive, said it’s a balancing act when it comes to Super Bowl advertising. He said a company has to have the right product, ad campaign, and, of course, capital to stand out and get a return on its investment.

“Super Bowl is just a massive platform, but it has gotten so expensive,” Mahoney, who worked for GM, VW, Subaru and Porsche, told CNBC. “There are sometimes interesting ways to navigate around it. … Adjacencies can be smart.”

During Mahoney’s tenure, Subaru became the presenting sponsor of Animal Planet’s Puppy Bowl and GM’s Chevrolet brand “blacked out” TV screens just ahead of the Super Bowl for an ad for its in-vehicle Wi-Fi in 2015.

Outside of the Super Bowl, automakers have increased sports advertising and embraced more streaming and regional advertising over national reach, according to iSpot.

“They’re not cutting back in live sports,” Muller said, citing iSpot data that automakers now represent roughly 60% of spend on live sports.

Autos out

Automotive executives who spoke to CNBC about not advertising during this year’s Super Bowl said they were deterred due to the cost — $8 million on average for a 30-second ad — and felt their ad dollars would be better spent elsewhere.

“We are going to really spread our efforts, so money and creativity, over a year,” said Stellantis Chief Marketing Officer Olivier Francois, who is well known for past Super Bowl ads. “There’s no need for a peak or something in February.”

Stellantis, which is in the midst of a company turnaround plan, will focus this year on the 250th anniversary of the U.S. as its major marketing push in addition to more business-oriented spending and a provocative social media campaign for Jeep featuring a singing fish it launched this week.

Nissan Motor, which last advertised during the Super Bowl in 2022, is also experimenting this year with parallel advertising.

The Japan-based automaker on Friday released a comedic, high-energy “Big Game” social media ad promoting a chips-and-dip holder for its Nissan Rogue SUV. The “Nissan Dip Seat” ad stars chef and “The Bear” actor Matty Matheson promoting the fictional product. It also promotes a sweepstakes to win one of the vehicles.

“One of the key things for us is that we wanted to kind of find a way that was more social in nature. It’s been a part of what our overall strategy has been this year,” Nissan U.S. CMO Allyson Witherspoon told CNBC.

Witherspoon declined to discuss the cost of the spot, but confirmed it was less than it would have spent to air a traditional Super Bowl ad.

Others, such as Honda Motor, will look to the Olympics as their major ad spending. Honda is sponsoring U.S. Olympic and Paralympic teams for the Winter Games in Milan this year as well as at the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles.

“Super Bowl is one moment in time. The Olympics has so many verticals you can dip into and tell these stories,” said Ed Beadle, who leads marketing for American Honda Motor.

The opening ceremony for the Winter Olympics took place on Friday in Milan. It also kicks off a month that Comcast’s NBCUniversal — which will be airing the Olympics, Super Bowl and NBA All-Star weekend — has coined “Legendary February.”

2026 ads

GM remains a wild card for this year’s game, as the only automaker to not prerelease its ad. The Detroit automaker is using the Super Bowl to launch its Cadillac F1 team, including revealing the look of its first livery car to a national audience.

The automaker last month showed a design prototype of the vehicle in Detroit, including at the city’s auto show, but it has not released any information about the commercial.

Toyota, the NFL’s official automotive partner, is expected to air two 30-second ads focused on family connections.

One called “Superhero Belt” shows a grandson and a grandfather switching roles over the years and telling each other to secure their seatbelts. The other has not been released.

Volkswagen’s ad resurrects the automaker’s well-known 1990s campaign for a new generation of customers, as part of a marketing drive called “The Great Invitation: Drivers Wanted.”

The new campaign, including a 30-second Super Bowl spot, features many of the automaker’s vehicles being driven around to House of Pain’s 1992 hit “Jump Around.”

— CNBC’s Lillian Rizzo contributed to this report.

Disclosure: CNBC parent Versant is carrying NBC Sports-produced Olympic coverage on its networks, including USA Network and CNBC.

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Streaming-only Super Bowl ads gain traction on NBC’s Peacock

admin — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 17:31:36 +0000

A Super Bowl LX sign is seen at Civic Center Plaza in San Francisco, Friday, Jan. 30, 2026.

Stephen Lam | San Francisco Chronicle | Hearst Newspapers | Getty Images

The Super Bowl is prime real estate every year for advertisers eager to get their brands in front of millions of consumers at once. It’s also costly.

That’s why a small subset of ad space for streaming-only commercials is gaining traction and granting smaller brands time during TV’s biggest night of the year.

Comcast’s NBC broadcast network will air Super Bowl 60 this year, with the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots facing off from Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California. NBC’s streaming service, Peacock, will simulcast the event. While streaming has generally become the overwhelmingly popular way to consume content, the Super Bowl is still primarily watched via the broadcast network.

The streaming simulcast — gaining viewers each year — features certain ad spots earmarked only for that audience.

Streaming-only spots make up about 10% of the full ad inventory during the Super Bowl and cost about half of what a traditional TV commercial goes for, said Mark Marshall, NBC’s chairman of global advertising and partnerships.

“So cheaper, but still not cheap,” said Marshall. “And part of it is also you don’t have many of these spots, right? So I think people caught on to this trick over the past couple years, and it’s done really well in streaming. And as a result, a lot of people are lining up and wanting to do that.”

Each year the cost of the national ads for the Super Bowl breaks a record. NBC sold out of ad inventory for the Super Bowl, averaging $8 million per 30-second commercial, with between five and 10 ads selling for more than $10 million each, CNBC previously reported.

The streaming-only ads, which still appear nationally, fill the slots that would host regional commercials during the traditional TV broadcast.

These spots bring in new advertisers outside of the mainstays like Budweiser and Lay’s. All of the Peacock-only commercials this year are new advertisers to NBC’s Super Bowl slate, Marshall said. For example, cowboy boots brand Tecovas and family location safety app Life360 both bought streaming-only ad spots this year.

The chief marketing officers for both brands noted the impact of the Super Bowl — as well as steep cost — in explaining their decision to go all in on Peacock.

Tecovas CMO Krista Dalton in an email called the company’s debut via streaming “a deliberate choice,” allowing the brand to get the impact of the Super Bowl with “a highly engaged environment while staying disciplined with our investment.”

Life360 CMO Mike Zeman said via email, “Streaming is a great way for us to test what being integrated into such a monumental cultural moment can deliver to our brand and business. It allows us to reach a massive, highly engaged audience of modern, connected families with an ‘out of pocket’ investment that doesn’t break the bank or occupy too large a percentage of our overall marketing budget.”

Last year nearly 128 million viewers watched the Super Bowl on TV and via streaming, according to Nielsen.

While NBC has had a digital offering for its last four Super Bowl telecasts, Marshall said more advertisers have been vying for streaming space as the platform reached 44 million subscribers.

And fittingly, that growth has been driven largely by NBC’s push into live sports. This month NBC will air the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics — which begin on Friday — along with the NBA All-Star game. It’s a live sports slate the company is billing as “Legendary February.”

“It’s obviously a huge year for NBC, and Peacock is more sold out than usual. We’re seeing a lot of brands leaning in with Peacock,” said Doug Paladino of ad agency PMG.

Paladino noted brands have seen good results advertising during “Sunday Night Football” games that are simulcast on Peacock, particularly due to the audience targeting capabilities on streaming.

The streaming-only commercials can also be something of an on-ramp for burgeoning brands that want to get their foot in the door of the big game.

Last year, direct-to-consumer health startup Ro bought its first ad during the Super Bowl — on Fox’s streaming service Tubi.

“The results that they got out of the Super Bowl for what they paid were an order of magnitude above what the traditional spot is,” said Philip Inghelbrecht, co-founder and CEO of ad tech firm Tatari, which worked with brands to place streaming-only and traditional TV ads in the Super Bowl, including Ro in both 2025 and 2026.

This year, Ro, which offers access to GLP-1 medications and telehealth appointments, ramped up its commitment to the Super Bowl and bought a spot in the traditional game broadcast on NBC. Tennis superstar Serena Williams will anchor the ad.

“Last year we dipped our toes into advertising in the Super Bowl through a buy on Tubi. It was a really attractive chance for us to really understand how our brand and our creative performed in that environment,” said Will Flaherty, senior vice president of growth at Ro.

Smaller brands have other more-affordable options to test the waters, too.

Manscaped, the men’s grooming company, decided to buy a spot before kickoff — a time slot less coveted than during the game itself, but still pricey — to push the next chapter of its business.

Manscaped Super Bowl LX campaign.

Courtesy: Manscaped

“Manscaped is a brand that has been around for a few years now, but we’re at this very important moment in our trajectory, which is a big push for products beyond the groin, which is our first claim to fame,” said Chief Marketing Officer Marcelo Kertesz. “We have something new to communicate to the world.”

“We know the spot itself is just one piece of it, a very important and very expensive piece of it, but it does make sense for us to do that in this moment,” said Kertesz. “It’s a desire I would guess all brands, at some point, have to be on that stage.”

Disclosure: CNBC parent Versant is carrying NBC Sports-produced Olympic coverage on its networks, including USA Network and CNBC.

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RAISE Act New York faces opposition from Trump, AI industry super PAC

admin — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 17:18:04 +0000

New York is 3,000 miles away from the tech hub of Silicon Valley, but in recent weeks, the state has inserted itself into the center of a fierce debate around artificial intelligence regulation.

A bipartisan super PAC called “Leading the Future” announced last week that it will target Alex Bores, a Democratic congressional candidate who has openly championed AI safety legislation in New York by promoting the the Responsible AI Safety and Education (RAISE) Act. The bill would require large AI companies to publish safety and risk protocols and disclose serious safety incidents.

“They don’t want there to be any regulation whatsoever,” Bores told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Monday. “What they’re saying is the fact that you dared step up and push back on us at all means we need to bury you with millions and millions of dollars.”

Leading the Future (LTF) launched in August with more than $100 million in funding, and aims to elevate “candidates who support a bold, forward-looking approach to AI,” according to a release. The group largely represents the view of the Trump administration, that federal AI laws should preempt regulations implemented by specific states, an effort mostly meant to undermine big blue states like California and New York.

The super PAC is backed by high-profile names in tech, including OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, venture firm Andreessen Horowitz and AI startup Perplexity.

“LTF and its affiliated organizations will oppose policies that stifle innovation, enable China to gain global AI superiority, or make it harder to bring AI’s benefits into the world, and those who support that agenda,” the group said in the release.

Bores has served as a New York State Assembly member since 2023, and previously worked at several tech companies, including Palantir. He launched his congressional campaign for New York’s 12th district in October after sitting Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler announced he would not run for reelection.

As an assemblyman, Bores co-sponsored the RAISE Act.

“I’m very bullish on the power of AI, I take the tech companies seriously for what they think this could do in the future,” Bores said on Monday. “But the same pathways that will allow it to potentially cure diseases [will] allow it to, say, build a bio weapon. And so you just want to be managing the risk of that potential.”

Assembly member Alex Bores speaks during a press conference on the Climate Change Superfund Act at Pier 17 on May 26, 2023 in New York City.

Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images

The RAISE Act passed in New York’s state assembly and senate in June. Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul has until the start of the 2026 session to decide whether to sign it into law.

On Nov. 17, LTF’s leaders Zac Moffatt and Josh Vlasto announced they plan to spend millions of dollars to try to sink Bores’ congressional bid. In a statement, they accused Bores of pushing “ideological and politically motivated legislation” that would “handcuff” the U.S. and its ability to lead in AI.

The bill is “a clear example of the patchwork, uninformed, and bureaucratic state laws that would slow American progress and open the door for China to win the global race for AI leadership,” Moffatt and Vlasto told CNBC in a statement.

Moffatt has more than two decades of experience in digital and political strategy, while Vlasto previously served as press secretary to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and chief of staff to former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Politico was first to report LTF’s effort to target Bores.

Bores has capitalized on LTF’s announcement as a fundraising opportunity, urging voters to donate to his campaign if they “don’t want Trump mega-donors writing all tech policy,” he wrote in a post on X.

“I am someone with a master’s in computer science, two patents, and nearly a decade working in tech,” Bores told CNBC in a statement last week. “If they are scared of people who understand their business regulating their business, they are telling on themselves.”

What is the RAISE Act?

The RAISE Act applies to any large AI company, like Google, Meta or OpenAI, that has spent more than $100 million in computational resources to train advanced models.

It would require these companies to write, publish and follow safety and security protocols, and to update them as necessary. Violators could be subject to penalties of up to $30 million.

The companies would also have to take steps to implement safeguards to prevent their models from engaging in “critical harm,” like assisting in the creation of chemical weapons or large-scale, automated criminal activities. “Critical harm” is defined in the bill as the death or serious injury of 100 people or at least $1 billion in damages.

Under the RAISE Act, large AI companies would not be able to release models that would create “unreasonable risk of critical harm.” Bores said the bill’s opponents have pushed back fiercely on that part of the legislation.

“That’s designed to basically avoid the problem we had with the tobacco companies, where they knew that cigarettes caused cancer but denied it publicly and continued to release their products,” he said.

The RAISE Act would also require AI companies to disclose notable safety incidents. If a model is stolen by a malicious actor, for instance, its developer would have to disclose that incident within 72 hours of learning about it.

“We just saw two weeks ago, Anthropic talk about how China used their model to do a cyber attack on U.S. government institutions and our chemical manufacturing plants,” Bores said. “Shockingly, they didn’t have to disclose that. I think that should be law and be required for every major AI developer.”

Anthropic, an AI startup valued at around $350 billion after recent investments, published a blog post earlier this month detailing what it called “the first documented case of a large-scale cyberattack executed without substantial human intervention.” Anthropic said it believes the threat actor was a Chinese state-sponsored group.

Bores told Tech Brew that he drafted the initial version of the bill in August of 2024 and sent it to “all of the major developers” for feedback. He put together a second draft in December, and solicited another round of red lines.

The RAISE Act was published in March, and amended in May and June.

“I worked really closely with a lot of people in industry to get the details right,” Bores told Tech Brew.

U.S. President Donald Trump arrives on the South Lawn of the White House on November 22, 2025 in Washington, DC.

John Mcdonnell | Getty Images

LTF’s decision to target Bores over the RAISE Act is emblematic of a broader debate around whether AI should be regulated at the state or federal level in the U.S.

Some lawmakers and tech executives have argued that a “patchwork” of state AI policies will hinder innovation and put the U.S. at risk of falling behind its adversaries like China. But others, including Bores, have said that the federal government moves too slowly to keep up with the rapid pace of AI development.

“What’s being debated right now is, should we stop the states from making any progress before the feds have solved the problem? Or should we actually work together to have the federal government solve the problem?” Bores said.

Aside from New York, states including California, Colorado, Illinois and others have their own AI laws that are either already in effect or will be starting early next year.

Last week, President Donald Trump advocated for a federal AI standard in a post on his social media site Truth Social.

“Investment in AI is helping to make the U.S. Economy the ‘HOTTEST’ in the World, but overregulation by the States is threatening to undermine this Major Growth ‘Engine,'” Trump wrote. “We MUST have one Federal Standard instead of a patchwork of 50 State Regulatory Regimes. If we don’t, then China will easily catch us in the AI race.”

The White House also began drafting an executive order that would target state AI laws by launching legal challenges and withholding federal funding, CNBC reported on Thursday. But a day later, the Trump administration put a hold on that effort, according to a report from Reuters.

The White House didn’t provide a comment for this story.

Earlier this year, a proposed amendment to Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” would have enacted a 10-year-long suspension on state-level AI laws. That provision ultimately failed and was not included in the legislation, but the Trump administration recently revitalized the effort.

The White House is working to see if a moratorium on certain state AI laws could be included in one of the major must-pass bills that Congress is pursuing.

“What we’re seeing in AI is natural, states are stepping up and moving quickly,” Bores said. “We should eventually have a federal AI standard. I strongly agree with that.”

WATCH: AI industry-backed super PAC picks first target

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Super Micro shares fall on weak preliminary results

admin — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 16:29:25 +0000

Charles Liang, CEO of Super Micro, speaks at the Computex conference in Taipei, Taiwan, on June 1, 2023.

Walid Berrazeg | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Super Micro Computer shares fell 6% on Thursday after the company released weak preliminary results for its fiscal first quarter of 2026.

The server maker said it expects to report $5 billion in revenue for the quarter, down from the $6 billion to $7 billion guidance that the company had previously issued.

Super Micro said “design win upgrades” pushed some expected first-quarter revenue to the second quarter.

“We see customer demand accelerating, and we are gaining AI share, reiterating revenue of at least $33B for FY 2026 with the expectation of delivering more.” Super Micro CEO Charles Liang said in a statement.

Super Micro said it has had “recent design wins” of more than $12 billion, and that delivery has been requested during its fiscal second quarter.

The company will provide further updates on its expected second-quarter deliveries and revenues during its earnings call on Nov. 4, when it will officially report its first-quarter results.

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Super Micro year to date stock chart.

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NFL to fine players for reselling Super Bowl tickets at a profit

admin — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 22:07:15 +0000

A detail shot of the Lombardi Trophy next to Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles helmets prior to a news conference on February 03, 2025 in New Orleans, Louisiana ahead of the NFL Super Bowl LIX football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs.

Kevin Sabitus | Getty Images Sport | Getty Images

The NFL is cracking down on the resale of Super Bowl tickets by players, coaches and club employees.

The league plans to fine more than 100 players and roughly two dozen club employees who were found to be in violation of the NFL’s Ticket Resale policy in connection with Super Bowl 59 tickets, according to an internal memo from the league’s chief compliance officer, Sabrina Perel, that was viewed by CNBC.

An investigation found that those players and personnel were selling these tickets to resale “bundlers” at a profit, according to the memo.

Players will be fined 1.5-times the face value of the tickets they sold, and employees will be fined twice the face value, according to a person familiar with the matter who declined to be named speaking about nonpublic details.

Non-player personnel found in violation of the policy will also lose the ability to purchase future NFL tickets, according to the memo.

The league prohibits employees and players from selling NFL game tickets acquired from their employer for more than the ticket’s face value or more than the employee originally paid — whichever is less.

The league is also taking steps to enhance compliance training ahead of Super Bowl 60 and said it will increase penalties for future offenses.

“No one should profit personally from their NFL affiliation at the expense of our fans,” Perel wrote in the memo.

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Super Micro to ramp up investment in Europe to capitalize on AI demand

admin — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 03:23:34 +0000

CEO of Supermicro Charles Liang speaks during the Reuters NEXT conference in New York City, U.S., December 10, 2024.

Mike Segar | Reuters

PARIS — Super Micro plans to increase its investment in Europe, including ramping up manufacturing of its AI servers in the region, CEO Charles Liang told CNBC in an interview that aired on Wednesday.

The company sells servers which are packed with Nvidia chips and are key for training and implementing huge AI models. It has manufacturing facilities in the Netherlands, but could expand to other places.

“But because the demand in Europe is growing very fast, so I already decided, indeed, [there’s] already a plan to invest more in Europe, including manufacturing,” Liang told CNBC at the Raise Summit in Paris, France.

“The demand is global, and the demand will continue to improve in [the] next many years,” Liang added.

Liang’s comments come less than a month after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang visited various parts of Europe, signing infrastructure deals and urging the region to ramp up its computing capacity.

Growth to be ‘strong’

Super Micro rode the growth wave after OpenAI’s ChatGPT boom boosted demand for Nvidia’s chips, which underpin big AI models. The server maker’s stock hit a record high in March 2024. However, the stock is around 60% off that all-time high over concerns about its accounting and financial reporting. But the company in February filed its delayed financial report for its 2024 fiscal year, assuaging those fears.

In May, the company reported weaker-than-expected guidance for the current quarter, raising concerns about demand for its product.

However, Liang dismissed those fears. “Our growth rate continues to be strong, because we continue to grow our fundamental technology, and we [are] also expanding our business scope,” Liang said.

“So the room … to grow will be still very tremendous, very big.”

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Inside A.I.’s Super Bowl: Nvidia Dreams of A Robot Future

admin — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 17:16:53 +0000

The robots were everywhere. Some pedaled around like “Star Wars” droids. Others manipulated hospital surgery equipment. They all provided a glimpse of what a future powered by artificial intelligence could look like.

Nvidia, the world’s largest maker of artificial intelligence chips, brought the robots together as part of its annual developer conference in San Jose, Calif. The event, formally known as Nvidia GTC, has become the Super Bowl of A.I.

The weeklong showcase of robots, large language models (the systems behind A.I.-powered chatbots) and autonomous cars drew a who’s who of industry leaders and more than 25,000 attendees. They were there to learn about the latest A.I. technologies and hear Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, speak about A.I.’s future. Here are some photos and videos from the A.I. extravaganza:

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How NFL is getting rid of Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl merchandise

admin — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 02:28:01 +0000

If you think the Kansas City Chiefs’ brutal Super Bowl loss was embarrassing, think of all of the merchandise that got printed beforehand to celebrate a win — and which now needs to disappear.

Every January, the National Football League is presented with a problem: Two teams play in the Super Bowl, but only one wins — and the merch to celebrate that win needs to be distributed immediately.

Meanwhile, a trove of T-shirts, jerseys, sweatshirts and hats that seemingly hail from an alternate reality — with this year’s batch declaring the Chiefs the “Super Bowl LII Champions” instead of the Philadelphia Eagles — also must be liquidated.

Nicaraguan children on a Buena Vista soccer team wear NFL-donated apparel hailing the New England Patriots as 2008 Super Bowl Champions, despite having lost to the New York Giants 17-14 that year. ASSOCIATED PRESS

That creates “waste,” according to nonprofit Good360, which for more than a decade has worked with the NFL to redistribute the unlucky merchandise of losing Super Bowl teams.

But Good360, which ranked No. 2 in Forbes’ top 10 charities list last year, also has another speciality, too: making sure the merch doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.

That means “focusing on regions where the NFL is not widely followed, reducing the likelihood of resale, and trusted partnerships working with vetted nonprofit partners that have demonstrated a track record of responsible distribution,” according to Good360 CEO Cinira Baldi.

This year, it remains unclear where the ill-fated Chiefs merchandise may end up, but Good360 said past destination countries have included Ukraine, Estonia, Mongolia, and Latvia.

Despite the NFL’s best efforts to send incorrect merchandise overseas, some gets into some individuals hands and sold on eBay. This shirt is on sale on eBay for $24.95, incorrectly declaring the Seattle Seahawk’s back-to-back champions in 2015, despite the New England Patriots winning that year. eBay

Pre-made merchandise sits in a factory declaring both the Indianapolis Colts and the Chicago Bears as victors before the 2007 Super Bowl. ASSOCIATED PRESS

Unauthorized merchandise disrupts the NFL’s strictly adhered to branding guide, which states that all NFL communication should stand in support of brand values — one of which is anti-bullying.

In 2015, the Seattle Seahawks XLIX Super Bowl winning merchandise was leaked on online, sparking heated debates and nasty remarks online as the New England Patriots had actually won the game 28-24.

“I live up here and hate the Seachickens. I want a shirt or hat just to rub it in,” one user commented on SportsLogos.net.

Others commented that the leaked Seahawks lime green design was “ugly” and “a few shades away from puke green.”

Travis Kelce, the Kanas City Chiefs tight-end, hangs his head low after losing the Super Bowl. USA TODAY Sports via Reuters Con

Jalen Hurts, quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles, celebrates his 2025 Super Bowl win holding the Vince Lombardi Trophy after defeating the Kansas City Chiefs. Getty Images

Kelce and Hurts hug after the Eagles beat the Chiefs. Getty Images

The NFL and other pro sports leagues have partnered with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security to create Operation Team Player Initiative — seizing counterfeit sports merchandise to uphold the economic vitality of the US.

Right before last Sunday’s Super Bowl game, Operation Team Player Initiative seized $39.5 million in counterfeit goods.

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